This article was inadvertantly omitted from yesterday’s edition.

Tom Meeks has been a high school basketball referee. Not that this experience necessarily makes him a better U.S. Golf Association director of rules and competitions.

But you can learn a lot about a person by how he spends his free time.

Meeks has taken the brunt of the criticism for the questioned 18th-hole location at last year’s U.S. Open at the Olympic Club, even though the decision to set the hole near a severe slope at the top of the green was made by committee.

Meeks and 48 other fans of the U.S. Open gathered at the first tee of the Pinehurst No. 2 Course at 5:40 a.m. Thursday morning to set the tee markers and "cut" the day’s holes into the putting surfaces.

The setting was surreal: floodlights from the clubhouse and The Golf Channel’s TV cameras. Sounds of a half-dozen fairway and green mowers. Strained voices.

In the past, Meeks and the USGA staff and committee have gone about this otherwise mundane task in virtual anonymity. But today, in addition to the Golf Channel crew, Meeks worked with a lot of people watching, reporting and writing. Meeks shared a golf cart with Jerry Potter of USA Today.

Cutting golf holes is now a big deal.

Several USGA and Pinehurst staff were interested in the pace of the greens, carrying the distinctive green Stimpmeter here and there on the greens as the Pinehurst maintenance staff triple cut the greens. Brad Kocher, who oversees all the maintenance at Pinehurst Country Club, recounted that a little more than nine-tenths of an inch of rain fell Wednesday, most of that water falling early enough in the evening that the greens drained easily and well.

After one cut, the first couple of greens were running 10 feet and 8 inches on the Stimpmeter. After three cuts, the pace was 11 feet and 3 inches, which by anyone’s judgment is pretty fast.

Meeks and Mike Davis, the USGA director of championship relations, reached the first green about 5:55 a.m. Meeks consulted his master list of hole locations and told Davis, "31 front and 7 right."

The hole-location sheets the players received on the first tee Thursday gave the same numbers, so Meeks and Davis were committed to cutting the first hole in a pretty specific area.

"We decided over several trips where we want to put each hole each day," Meeks said. "By Tuesday (of this week) we had a real good idea where we want to go."

Davis placed a paint can in the general location while he and Meeks walked around the area one more time. Davis putted a couple of balls at the paint can. Meeks moved the can a couple of inches. The Thursday hole was then cut.

Not done yet, the two went to work on Friday’s location, performing the same ritual: 21 front and 4 left. This would be the toughest of the hole locations on the first hole.

Meeks dotted the Friday location with a tiny spot of white paint.

"We pick four hole locations on each green and grade them from difficult to easy," Meeks explained of his process, one that he learned from P.J. Boatwright Jr., who likely learned it from Joe Dey, both USGA staff legends.

The toughest hole location at each hole is given a one, the easiest gets a four. Meeks used four "ones" on Thursday and planned to use four more on Friday.

"We don’t try to set up the course any more difficult on Thursday than we do on Sunday," Meeks said.

Not everyone would believe that statement, because scores almost always are higher on the weekend or during the closing rounds. "You might have to consider some other factors," Meeks noted. When asked if the pressure a competitor feels Saturday or Sunday afternoon might account for some of the higher scores, Meeks agreed.

As Meeks approached the second tee, he walked directly to the yardarm near the back of the tee. The yardage was listed at 447. "The players practice from these areas, and we won’t vary the tee markers by more than five yards either side of the yard arm," he said.

"Nineteen front and 15 right," he told Davis, who quickly paced both yardages to find the hole location.

"We are concerned about where the holes go," he said. "We want to give the competitors a fair test. That might be better defined by where we don’t put a hole than where we do put one."

Meeks spent a degree of time at the fifth green, studying Pinehurst No. 2 Course’s tough putting surface on, perhaps, its toughest hole. Anywhere to the left on this green would be difficult, and he wanted to avoid going too far left.

By the time Meeks, Davis and the hole-cutting crew got to the sixth hole, the TV crew and some other onlookers had abandoned the group. They were replaced, however, at each stop by gallery marshals who smiled and greeted the crew. It was 7:10 a.m. and a light mist fell.

By the time they were finished cutting one hole location and dotting another at the eighth green, Meeks and Davis knew that Jumbo Ozaki, David Toms and Brandel Chamblee, the first group of the day, were on the fourth hole. They had settled into a good pace, well ahead of the players.

Thoughtful and focused, they went on to the ninth hole.